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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 955 records · Page 53

Nuclear Power Plant Cyber Security Discrete Dynamic Event Tree Analysis (LDRD 17-0958) FY17 Report

Instrumentation and control of nuclear power is transforming from analog to modern digital assets. These control systems perform key safety and security functions. This transformation is occurring in new plant designs as well as in the existing fleet of plants as the operation of those plants is extended to 60 years. This transformation introduces new and unknown issues involving both digital asset induced safety issues and security issues. Traditional nuclear power risk assessment tools and cyber security assessment methods have not been modified or developed to address the unique nature of cyber failure modes and of cyber security threat vulnerabilities. iii This Lab-Directed Research and Development project has developed a dynamic cyber-risk in- formed tool to facilitate the analysis of unique cyber failure modes and the time sequencing of cyber faults, both malicious and non-malicious, and impose those cyber exploits and cyber faults onto a nuclear power plant accident sequence simulator code to assess how cyber exploits and cyber faults could interact with a plants digital instrumentation and control (DI&C) system and defeat or circumvent a plants cyber security controls. This was achieved by coupling an existing Sandia National Laboratories nuclear accident dynamic simulator code with a cyber emulytics code to demonstrate real-time simulation of cyber exploits and their impact on automatic DI&C responses. Studying such potential time-sequenced cyber-attacks and their risks (i.e., the associated impact and the associated degree of difficulty to achieve the attack vector) on accident management establishes a technical risk informed framework for developing effective cyber security controls for nuclear power.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Potential impacts of China's climate policies on energy security

Highlights: • We develop an energy security assessment framework in a 3E-integrated system model. • The potential relations between climate targets and energy security are examined. • Climate policy reduces risks of energy system in terms of main safety metrics. • The impact of emission budgets on energy diversity relies on the time scale options. • Co-benefits of energy security would improve the economics of climate policies. - Abstract: Energy security, as an indispensable constituent of economic security, has long been a top research priority, and the dynamics of energy security become particularly complicated with the involvement of climate change. In this work, we combined a one-sector integrated assessment framework with a series of well-proposed energy security metrics to extensively explore the unidirectional consistency between climate policy and energy security from the national perspective. Implementation of climate policy is generally beneficial for improving energy security. Specifically, climate policy helps to reduce the systematic risk of China's energy system according to the metrics of energy (oil) intensity, energy (oil) expenditures and per capita energy (oil) consumption independent of time scale options. As observed from the perspective of energy diversity, co-benefits arising from climate policy primarily emerge in the first half of this century, and they may gradually decline as emission constraints and the phasing out of fossil fuels are enhanced. Additionally, the macroeconomic costs required to reach China's committed carbon-peaking target might be far lower than the costs required to fulfill the emission budgets under the global 2-degree warming rise threshold. If the co-benefits of energy security are considered, the economics of climate policy is expected to significantly improve.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Secure hierarchical processing using a secure ledger

Disclosed is a system and method for processing data using blockchain technology. The system includes a memory having programmable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause the system to: authenticate one or more sensors in anticipation of receiving component data; receive component data, upon successful authentication; store the component data locally or to a cloud-based server and/or calculate a root value for the component data; store or embed the root value with the stored component data; condense the component data and link the condensed component data to the stored component data via the root value. The system further includes instructions to log the condensed data, including the root value, to a ledger, and to identify a tag or transaction id corresponding to the logging event for subsequent retrieval of the condensed data using the tag or transaction id.

Zhao, Wenbing↗

Supporting U.S. National Security Through Cybersecurity Partnerships

At NLR, we're studying energy evolutions and threats to understand the challenges they pose and uncover ways to leverage grid advancements to achieve more secure, defensible, and reliable systems. Our integrated research approach bridges the gap between cyber threats and real-world consequences to deliver actionable solutions that reduce vulnerabilities and help strengthen U.S. national security.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

A trilevel model against false gas-supply information attacks in electricity systems

The interdependence between natural gas and electricity systems is increasing rapidly due to the growing reliance on natural gas-fired generating units. Availability of natural gas for gas-fired generating units can impact the secure operation of electricity systems. Fuel supply shortage for gas-fired units can be caused by uncertain interruptible supply contracts and incorrect supply information. This article proposes a trilevel min-max-min defender-attacker-operator optimization problem to provide the power system operator a screening methodology that allocates a limited budget for best protecting critical fuel supply information, and also the strategies to sign firm supply contract to reduce natural gas supply uncertainties. We utilize a column and constraint generation (C&CG) algorithm to solve the proposed problem. We illustrate the effectiveness of this trilevel formulation using a case study based on IEEE 24-node test system.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Adaptive Protective Relay Settings – A Vision to the Future

Adaptive relaying utilizes the continuously changing status of the power system as the basis for online adjustment of the power system relay settings. Fundamentally they are protection schemes that adjust settings and/or logic of operations based on the prevailing conditions of the system. These adjustments can include, but are not limited to, the logging of data for post-mortem analysis, communication throughout the system, as well as changing relay parameters. Adaptive relaying considers the fact that the status of a power system can change. These include system configuration changes, load effect, cold load pickup, end-of-line protection, transformer protection, and automatic reclosing. In this research, the author focus on the need for a secure, selective, and reliable system for adaptive overcurrent protection in T&D and Distributed Energy Systems. Various types of adaptive methods are presented and explained along with some pros and cons of each.

Mukherjee, Srijib↗

Towards Behavioral Reflexion Models

Software architecture has become essential in the struggle to manage today s increasingly large and complex systems. Software architecture views are created to capture important system characteristics on an abstract and, thus, comprehensible level. As the system is implemented and later maintained, it often deviates from the original design specification. Such deviations can have implication for the quality of the system, such as reliability, security, and maintainability. Software architecture compliance checking approaches, such as the reflexion model technique, have been proposed to address this issue by comparing the implementation to a model of the systems architecture design. However, architecture compliance checking approaches focus solely on structural characteristics and ignore behavioral conformance. This is especially an issue in Systems-of- Systems. Systems-of-Systems (SoS) are decompositions of large systems, into smaller systems for the sake of flexibility. Deviations of the implementation to its behavioral design often reduce the reliability of the entire SoS. An approach is needed that supports the reasoning about behavioral conformance on architecture level. In order to address this issue, we have developed an approach for comparing the implementation of a SoS to an architecture model of its behavioral design. The approach follows the idea of reflexion models and adopts it to support the compliance checking of behaviors. In this paper, we focus on sequencing properties as they play an important role in many SoS. Sequencing deviations potentially have a severe impact on the SoS correctness and qualities. The desired behavioral specification is defined in UML sequence diagram notation and behaviors are extracted from the SoS implementation. The behaviors are then mapped to the model of the desired behavior and the two are compared. Finally, a reflexion model is constructed that shows the deviations between behavioral design and implementation. This paper discusses the approach and shows how it can be applied to investigate reliability issues in SoS.

Ackermann, Christopher↗

Kenya Food Security & Agriculture II: Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Enhance Drought Warning Systems and Develop Capacity to Use the RHEAS Model in Kenya

Twenty-three counties in Kenya experience frequent drought, which damages agricultural productivity and threatens the health and well being of millions. NASA DEVELOP partnered with NASA SERVIR, the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) to enhance drought-detection capacity using NASA Earth observations. Currently, the NDMA publishes monthly Early Warning Bulletins with drought conditions for each arid or semi-arid county in Kenya. These bulletins utilize the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) from the Moderate Resolution ImagingSpectroradiometer (MODIS) as well as a variety of biophysical, social and economic drought indicators, but do not allow for advanced forecasting. To improve drought-monitoring capabilities, the team created a Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) using the Regional Hydrologic Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS) model and data from Aqua and Terra MODIS and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The CDI combined precipitation anomalies, soil moisture anomalies, evaporative stress, and VCI according to weights determined by principal component analysis. To evaluate the performance of the CDI across Kenya, the team compiled a dataset of drought events from historical reports and the NDMA’s records. Results suggested that the CDI detected drought earlier thanVCI alone. However, more validation is needed to ensure that the CDI accurately and consistently detects drought earlier than current warning systems. In order to better understand the behavior of individual indices and the potential for earlier drought detection, the team also conducted a time-lag analysis. The team found that VCI responds to drought, on average, one month later than most other indices included in the CDI, suggesting that incorporating additional indices could improve early drought warning systems in Kenya.

Food Security & Agriculture↗

Kenya Food Security & Agriculture II: Utilizing NASA Earth Observations to Enhance Drought Warning Systems and Develop Capacity to Use the RHEAS Model in Kenya

Twenty-three counties in Kenya experience frequent drought, which damages agricultural productivity and threatens the health and well being of millions. NASA DEVELOP partnered with NASA SERVIR, the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) to enhance drought-detection capacity using NASA Earth observations. Currently, the NDMA publishes monthly Early Warning Bulletins with drought conditions for each arid or semi-arid county in Kenya. These bulletins utilize the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) as well as a variety of biophysical, social and economic drought indicators, but do not allow for advanced forecasting. To improve drought-monitoring capabilities, the team created a Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) using the Regional Hydrologic Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS) model and data from Aqua and Terra MODIS and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.The CDI combined precipitation anomalies, soil moisture anomalies, evaporative stress, and VCI according to weights determined by principal component analysis. To evaluate the performance of the CDI across Kenya, the team compiled a dataset of drought events from historical reports and the NDMA’s records. Results suggested that the CDI detected drought earlier than VCI alone. However, more validation is needed to ensure that the CDI accurately and consistently detects drought earlier than current warning systems. In order to better understand the behavior of individual indices and the potential for earlier drought detection, the team also conducted a time-lag analysis. The team found that VCI responds to drought, on average, one month later than most other indices included in the CDI, suggesting that incorporating additional indices could improve early drought warning systems in Kenya.

Food Security & Agriculture↗

Non-intrusive data authentication systems and methods

Systems and methods are disclosed that create a separate digital and cryptographically secure signal “branch” to a secondary observer from a primary signal path of an information system. The information system may be a measurement system. The secure signal branch is creating without interfering with the primary signal path. In such a manner, the secondary observer may authenticate reported data while not interfering with the signal of the information system.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Cybersecurity at the Grid Edge: Protecting LA's Energy Systems in a Connected World

Join SoCalGas and the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) for an insightful webinar on securing operational technology and energy systems. Los Angeles has the second-largest metro by population in the nation, making it vital to protect the energy infrastructure that powers day-to-day life. However, cybersecurity for energy systems is an immense challenge due to an increasing number of interconnected devices and stakeholders. While there was traditionally a limited need to secure energy infrastructure, the grid is only becoming smarter and more software-defined. Amid aging infrastructure and evolving cyber threats, the need to ensure the security of energy is at an all-time high. Together, SoCalGas and NLR are assessing the current state-of-the-art of the energy ecosystem to understand gaps in current best practices and technologies relevant to powering the city of Los Angeles.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantifying the flexibility of hydrogen production systems to support large-scale renewable energy integration

Hydrogen is a flexible energy carrier that can be produced in various ways and support a variety of applications including industrial processes, energy storage and electricity production, and can serve as an alternative transportation fuel. Hydrogen can be integrated in multiple energy sectors and has the potential to increase overall energy system flexibility, improve energy security, and reduce environmental impact. In this paper, the interactions between fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), hydrogen production facilities, and the electric power grid are explored. The flexibility of hydrogen production systems can create synergistic opportunities to better integrate renewable sources into the electricity system. To quantify this potential, we project the hourly system-wide balancing challenges in California out to 2025 as more renewables are deployed and electricity demand continues to grow. Passenger FCEV adoption and refueling behavior are modeled in detail to spatially and temporally resolve the hydrogen demand. We then quantify the system-wide balancing benefits of controlling hydrogen production from water electrolysis to mitigate renewable intermittency, without compromising the mobility needs of FCEV drivers. Finally, a control algorithm that can achieve different objectives, including peak shaving, valley filling, and ramping mitigation is proposed. Here, our results show that oversizing electrolyzers can provide considerable benefits to mitigate renewable intermittency, while also supporting the deployment of hydrogen vehicles to help decarbonize the transportation sector.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Charting the unknown: A dive into the world of standards mapping

When you hear standards mapping what do you think about? For the Secure Software Central (SSC) project this means comparing our process to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) security control catalog. So how is it done? The project completed this summer can be broken down into three simple phases. Phase one consists of mapping the SSC process to the NIST’s security control catalog. While phase two entails mapping mitigations from a threat profile to NIST. Lastly phase three requires the creation of a knowledge base allowing for the reuse of controls across numerous projects This project presented a few different challenges: locating the correct control within the NIST catalog while correctly matching the proposed mitigations from the SSC team, accurately leveling the mitigation to the security level of the system, creating a toolbox to showcase a dataset of mitigations and standards to be used in current and future projects. each challenge allowed for opportunities in growth and understanding of how security controls can map to a governing set of standards. These standards maps are a crucial element to support the insights provided by the SSC team and allow the client to have confidence in the work being completed. My internship has allowed me to set and achieve many goals such as coming to understand that the field of cybersecurity truly is the right place for me. I have also learned that it’s ok to be wrong if you learn something from it. For significant accomplishments I have helped integrate standards mapping into the fabric of SSC. The field experience that I have gained such as interacting with the SSC team along with other senior staff and building a good rapport are crucial skills to. This time at PNNL has been an irreplaceable experience.

42 ENGINEERING↗

IT Data Mining Tool Uses in Aerospace

Data mining has a broad spectrum of uses throughout the realms of aerospace and information technology. Each of these areas has useful methods for processing, distributing, and storing its corresponding data. This paper focuses on ways to leverage the data mining tools and resources used in NASA's information technology area to meet the similar data mining needs of aviation and aerospace domains. This paper details the searching, alerting, reporting, and application functionalities of the Splunk system, used by NASA's Security Operations Center (SOC), and their potential shared solutions to address aircraft and spacecraft flight and ground systems data mining requirements. This paper also touches on capacity and security requirements when addressing sizeable amounts of data across a large data infrastructure.

Monroe, Gilena A.↗

SOLAr Critical Infrastructure Energization (SOLACE): Leveraging Distributed Energy Resources to Provide Local Power

This document is a technical report based on a large-scale DOE-funded project conducted between 2019 and 2022. The project, called SOLAr Critical infrastructure Energization (SOLACE), is aimed at leveraging distributed energy resources (DERs) to provide local power to communities, feeders, or other regions. The project included a particular focus on high-value critical loads such as municipal water supply, telecommunication hubs, and disaster shelters. The key developments of the project were: (1) A comprehensive pre-event power system analysis methodology that identifies and characterizes the viable local power options. (2) A DMS-based example control system for activating and operating the local power solution during a time of crisis. (3) Grid-forming inverter technology to enable isolated local power operation and black-starting. (4) Cyber-security considerations for isolated systems when wider-area communication may be offline. This report describes the overall process that identifies and assesses the viable DER-based local power solutions for a given facility, region, or community. The report documents the process, including the key analysis steps, tools required, data requirements, and recommended pass/fail criteria for each step. It also provides a sample implementation of this process through a test case. Finally, it provides details of how a viable pre-event plan can be selected and activated at go-time when an event has occurred.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Energy Resilience for Mission Assurance: Case Study Scoping Document

The Energy Resilience for Mission Assurance (ERMA) project—a Department of Energy Grid Modernization Lab Consortium effort carried out via a partnership among five national laboratories— seeks to develop metrics to quantify how improvements to energy system resilience translate to improved Department of Defense (DoD) mission assurance (MA) during wide-scale, long-duration outages of the bulk power system. DoD missions are integral to national security and highly dependent on electric power. However, energy system planners—both civilian and military—lack a clear and quantifiable mapping between electric power system resilience and MA, leaving a gap in their ability to understand and consider national security outcomes within their planning efforts. The ERMA project seeks to fill this gap, providing stakeholders with new capabilities to understand the impact of electric power system resilience on MA during hazard scenarios.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Quantum computing in power systems

Electric power systems provide the backbone of modern industrial societies. Enabling scalable grid analytics is the keystone to successfully operating large transmission and distribution systems. However, today's power systems are suffering from ever-increasing computational burdens in sustaining the expanding communities and deep integration of renewable energy resources, as well as managing huge volumes of data accordingly. These unprecedented challenges call for transformative analytics to support the resilient operations of power systems. Recently, the explosive growth of quantum computing techniques has ignited new hopes of revolutionizing power system computations. Quantum computing harnesses quantum mechanisms to solve traditionally intractable computational problems, which may lead to ultra-scalable and efficient power grid analytics. This paper reviews the newly emerging application of quantum computing techniques in power systems. We present a comprehensive overview of existing quantum-engineered power analytics from different operation perspectives, including static analysis, transient analysis, stochastic analysis, optimization, stability, and control. We thoroughly discuss the related quantum algorithms, their benefits and limitations, hardware implementations, and recommended practices. We also review the quantum networking techniques to ensure secure communication of power systems in the quantum era. Finally, we discuss challenges and future research directions. This paper will hopefully stimulate increasing attention to the development of quantum-engineered smart grids.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗